Still Married and Still Rowing to Hawaii

With 2,000 miles of rowing behind them and less than 400 miles to go, tech entrepreneurs and endurance athletes Sami Inkinen and wife Meredith Loring hope to reach Hawaii in early August, having set out from California on June 16.

Exhaustion and a bit of delirium appear to have set in. In July 27 and July 28 blog posts (www.fatchancerow.org), titled “Angkor Wat – my body is a wrecked temple” (picture above), Inkinen wrote: “I’m feeling like the Angkor Wat – the glory days are over. I’m wrecked, at least relatively speaking. I exercise about 540 hours each year, all type of workouts included. It’s a lot from a sofa potato perspective, but nothing for most endurance sports enthusiasts. Yet now we are just finishing our 39th day offshore and I’ve rowed almost that 540 hours in that short month and change. Based on my heart rate monitor my rowing intensity has dropped a bit, but I’m still working up to 5,500 – 6,000 cal of rowing work per day. How much is that? It’s about the same as a 70kg (155 pound) person running two marathons each day (=42km * 70kg * kcal/kg km = 2,940 cal per marathon). This CANT be healthy. High volume endurance training with no rest, among other things, is a way to reduce testosterone levels, which is a way to start a downward spiral in a lot of things.”

Still, Inkinen noted, “I’m guessing (relative to ocean rowing stories I’ve read before) that on relative basis we are doing fantastic. Our work rate is up, we are moving fast, we haven’t filed for a divorce yet and we remember our names when asked, as well as today’s date.”

While Inkinen has intrepidly exposed his body to the sun, and is starting to look like the Marlboro Man (according to Loring), Loring has obsessively slathered on the sunscreen. Loring wrote of her recent realization that the sunscreen she was trying to scrub from her skin at night was actually a tan line.

“It occurs to me then that the sunscreen I’ve been desperately trying to rid myself of is actually a tan line from my knees being pressed together as I row,” she wrote. “Hmmm, ok, I’m starting to get it. I think about how many other worries that have likely disturbed my peace, needlessly. I mean, I’m literally spending limited time worrying about non issues when I could just relax. It isn’t that you learn lessons out here, I mean, new ones. The thing about rowing an ocean is that you have the time and space to really think about and dissect the meaning of life’s ironies as they happen, which takes an incredible amount of discipline to do in the real world. Out here there is literally nothing more interesting or pressing to do. Not a single thing.”

Philosophical musings and body aches aside, the two also write of the beauty of the Pacific: schools of flying fish (Loring regularly gets hit by them), learning to ride “rodeo waves” in their boat, and taking the occasional dip in their “private pool” when the swells die down.

But the best thing of all? Inkinen wrote of their target arrival date: “Our ETA? We will share some thoughts by early next week. But with no accidents or last minute tropical storms, we will go well below/faster than our set goal of ’60 days and no divorce,’ which would be a great bonus for the expedition.”

Loring added, “We are in the part of the expedition when you are so close to the finish, but it feels like there is nothing left to give. The part when you check your time at least once per minute, if not more. The good thing is, both of us have raced enough to know that there is almost always something left in the tank, no matter how bad you feel, so we keep pushing.”